There were dances and feasts; and in all good humor the throng broke up.
Peace seemed to have come to the forests. The Piskaret party might well consider that they had opened the way. The happy priests gave thanks to Heaven that their prayers had been answered, and that the hearts of the Iroquois, the Algonkins and the Hurons were soft to the teachings of Christianity.
Now, would the peace last?
Yes—for twelve months, with the Mohawks alone. After which, saying that the Black Robe priests had sent them a famine plague in a box, the Mohawks seized new and sharper hatchets, again sped upon the war-trail to the St. Lawrence; and smote so terribly that at last they killed, in the forest, even Piskaret himself, while singing a peace-song he started to greet them.
The Algonkin peoples and the Hurons were driven like straw in the wind. Many fled west and south, into the Great Lakes country, and beyond.
CHAPTER III
OPECHANCANOUGH, SACHEM OF THE PAMUNKEYS (1607-1644)
WHO FOUGHT AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED
The first English-speaking settlement that held fast in the United States was Jamestown, inland a short distance from the Chesapeake Bay coast of Virginia, in the country of the Great King Powatan.